Northmont School 5-Year-Old Safe with Dad After Mom’s Bid to Fly Son Away

La Mesa police served a court order to a Kentucky woman Wednesday afternoon at Lindbergh Field that prevented her from flying home with her 5-year-old son, authorities said.

Reported as a child abduction by at least one media outlet, the incident was resolved quietly with the help of La Mesa undercover officers and Harbor police.

The blond boy, sporting a Mohawk haircut, was reunited with his father at the airport about 2:30 p.m., according to La Mesa police Lt. Dan Willis.

The mother was allowed to fly home on Southwest Airlines Flight 1237, first to Phoenix and eventually to Louisville, KY. The flight was delayed at Lindbergh.

Reportedly named Nicole and said to be 39, the mother wasn’t aware that a court order was pending against her when she claimed the boy at Northmont Elementary School in northeast La Mesa, officials said.

When confronted with the order, she offered no resistance, police said.

Although the Sheriff’s Department normally serves court orders, La Mesa police took action “because of the potential of her shortly leaving,” said Willis, who first heard of the situation about 11:15 a.m. Wednesday.

“In this case, we became more involved because of the urgency of [the mother] having a plane ticket that we confirmed was set to leave at 2:30 or 3 to go back east with the child,” he said.

The court order barred her from taking the child out of state, but the mother hadn’t been aware of it until a uniformed La Mesa officer served her at the airport in the Gate 1 area of the terminal.

“If she [had] had an earlier flight, and was able to leave before our officers got there to serve her, it wouldn’t have been a violation” of a court order, Willis said. “You have to be served with a court order to be guilty of violating a court order.”

At least two plainclothes La Mesa officers were involved at the airport, he said, because “we didn’t know what did she know, what didn’t she know. ... We didn’t know she’d be as cooperative as she was. ... We planned for the ‘what-if’ scenario and made sure we had enough people.”

Willis said he didn’t know whether the parents were divorced or separated. He also noted that the case would have been deemed child stealing, and not child abduction, had the mother been aware of the court order and taken the boy anyway.

A receptionist at Northmont Elementary School referred questions on the case to the La Mesa-Spring Valley School District offices on Date Avenue. District officials hadn’t replied to email and voice mail queries as of 7:20 p.m.

Among the questions—whether Northmont School followed proper procedures in releasing the 5-year-old boy to his mother, and whether the father had sufficiently notified the school of the court order.

Story updated at 10:20 a.m. June 9, 2011.